Photo-A-Day ~ November

I’m joining Kati’s November Photo-A-Day Challenge with days 10 through 16.

Day 10 ~ Yellow

This is one of the tiles that are part of our back splash behind our stove top.

Day 11 ~ Outside my Window

Ha! First, I had to use some glass cleaner on my window before I snapped away.

Day 12 ~ Small

Day 13 ~ Large

The contrast between the large and the small…

Day 14 ~ Swirl

Day 15 ~ Animal

It’s November so I’m sharing the wild turkeys we saw in Eastern Washington while visiting our son. This part of Eastern Washington is known as the Turkey Capitol of Washington State!

Day 16 ~ Red

For red I’m going back to Windsor England with the Guard in their dress uniforms.

It’s late on Friday and it’s been a busy day for me. After my exercise class I powered up the lawn mower and mowed the lawn which consisted mostly of vacuuming up the fallen leaves from the Maple, Pear and Apple Tree. I’m wondering if this will be the last mow of the season or if there will be one more. I’m sitting with my feet up now and am happy that we have a quiet weekend ahead. We are still in a dry, very cold weather system with plenty of frost in the mornings. I’ve been amazed at all the winter snow photos from many of you. Our son had snow in Eastern Washington.

Love this photo of my pop, sister Lana, and niece Melissa from their Thursday night dinner together.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Good Fences Chewelah…

Dusk and the White tail deer appear on our son’s property in Eastern Washington. The photos taken through our son’s garden fenced area makes it look like the deer are penned in but that’s not the case. They are free to roam beyond the fenced garden area and in the fields surrounding his home. Next time I’ll have to show you the animals that caused a traffic jam. 🙂

Joining in with TexWisGirl for Good Fences #33.

I’m still adjusting to the latest time change. How about you? It gets dark here so early now. This morning is the first morning we have a break in the cloud system and I see some nice brightness out my window. Time to go for a walk with the “ladies” again this morning. Tonight we’ll have small group at our house. Hope you have a good Thursday!

Quality Time Together…

Last Thursday Dear and I loaded up the car and headed East to enjoy some quality time with our kids. Our son-in-law Andrew wasn’t given time off of work to be able to join us and we missed him dearly.

On Friday (Halloween) we had a great hike on and above our son Dan’s property.

Our sons, Dan and Josh.

A Selfie from Josh and Laura.

Our daughter Katie and daughter-in-love, Laura.

Laura took this photo of Katie on our hike with her phone.

We had some great views and enjoyed lots of fall color.

My son shared some apples from his trees with the deer.

We enjoyed hiking, shooting, shopping, eating, and playing games together. We marvel at the world God created for us to enjoy and the people He has put in our lives to love and encourage us on our journey.

Dear and I stayed at a farmhouse close to our son’s home so the kids could enjoy staying up late and sleeping in while Dear and I tucked in earlier and woke up early each day. On Saturday morning all the kids came over to the farmhouse to enjoy a meal that Dear and I prepared for them. We bought some local made sausages and Dear made his fabulous Swedish pancakes and we added eggs to round off the meal.

Later on Saturday Dan and Jamie made us their famous fish tacos with their home made cabbage salsa. Dinner was so delicious. I’ll share the salsa recipe soon on Mennonite Girls Can cook. I’m so sad I didn’t take one photo of all the good eats we had.

We enjoyed three sunsets in Eastern Washington.

Dan and his girlfriend, Jamie.

Before we headed back over the Cascades to Western Washington we enjoyed brunch together.

We consider any time we are able to spend with our kids quality time.

I’m linking this post to ABC Wednesday for the letter Q. Thank you to Denise Nesbitt and the ABC crew.

Q is for Quality time spent together with family.

The Barn Collective

We just returned home from Eastern Washington where we saw some great barns. This wasn’t the kind of road trip where I could yell “STOP” around every corner to take a photo. We were headed over the mountains to spend quality time with our adult kids. Here’s the little barn that is on our son’s property.

I’m catching up at home as we just arrived back yesterday at five in the afternoon, in the dark, in rain showers. The time change always throws me for a loop and soon it will be getting dark at 4:30 in the afternoon. That always takes some getting used to. Hope you all had a good weekend. I’ll get my post from our time in Eastern Washington ready to go tomorrow.

Joining in with Amy at Rose Street Reflections for The Barn Collective. Click on over to see some great barns from around our world.

Horsin Around…

We’re having a good time in Eastern Washington and I’ll share all about it when we get home again, home again, jiggety jig. Beautiful colors, wonderful family and lots of good eats!

These photos are from our Halloween Hike where we saw some scary evidence of bears in the vicinity. Hope your Halloween isn’t too scary! We’re ready to welcome the wonderful month of November…

Eastern Washington Good Fences…

I love the rustic fences on our son’s property in Eastern Washington.

Good Fences is a weekly meme hosted by TexWisGirl at Run A Round Ranch.

I’m not at the top of my game today. I’ll be around to see what you are all up to later tonight or tomorrow. The sun is shining. I have to water my plants which is a good thing. We are celebrating a dear friend’s retirement over dinner tonight. Looking forward to that. Weekend plans involve getting our main floor bathroom ready for a total renovation. Busy times. What’s up for your weekend?

March Moments

I’m joining Cheryl at Thinking About Home in Gathering the Moments.

At the end of each month she offers a link up for anyone to add their post on gathering the moments of the month. How amazing it is to look back and see all the events that happened in 31 days. March is my birthday month which added a lot to the moments…

March brought flowers once again in the yard.

The opening of the MLS Soccer season and a 90th birthday celebration on the 8th of March. On March 11th Katie and I celebrated her and Andrew’s 3rd wedding anniversary. Andrew is serving our country in Afghanistan. Hopefully this will be the last anniversary for many years that they spend half a world apart.

March brought some traveling adventures, too. Katie and I visited Snoqualmie Falls and then Dear, Katie and I traveled to Eastern Washington on my birthday (March 14th) to spend the weekend with our middle son.

It’s fun to visit Dan’s country world. We had a nice meal out to celebrate my birthday. This would be one of three different celebrations I was treated to.

March brought the Mennonite Girls Can Cook class on preparing Paska and an Easter meal at Lepp Farm Market in Abbotsford, B.C. Katie and I traveled across the border to be part of this event. It was nice to start thinking about Easter.

Lots of good food was consumed in March!

Last night we were able to enjoy my third birthday celebration with Josh and Laura. We caught up on our lives over a great meal at Wild Ginger in Bellevue, Washington. I’ll share more about our time later and the meaningful gifts they gave me.

It’s time for the sun to set on March.

What highlights did March bring your way?

Country Fun vs. City Fun

Last weekend we traveled five and a half hours to our son’s home in the northeastern corner of Washington state. We were definitely in the country. There are things that you can do in the country that you are not free to do in the city. We have fun doing those things…

We arrived with the sun shining and blue skies.

There aren’t a lot of restaurants to choose from in the country compared to the city but you can still find some real good ones. We had my birthday dinner at The Chalet in Chewelah and we all enjoyed our meals.

Early on Saturday morning the snow started falling. We weren’t expecting that.

Thankfully the snow only lasted till noon and then melted nicely. On Saturday because of the cold and snow Dear and Dan did indoor projects.

In the country you can count on early morning visitors of the 4 legged variety that aren’t dogs or cats.

They make themselves at home.

We love the wide open spaces in the country. While walking out on Dan’s land on Sunday morning it was great to hear all the different birds chirping and the creek running.

Dan is fortunate to have a huge shop where he can work away from the elements.

You can’t do this in our city but in the country we got a great bonfire going cleaning up lots of debris around the property. While we worked outside our corned beef meal was cooking away in the slow cooker. When the clean-up for the day was done my family did some shooting. It’s nice to shoot out in the open instead of in a enclosed shooting range. In the evenings we enjoyed sitting around eating and enjoying each others company.

Before we headed home on Monday morning we drove north into Colville to the National Forest Service office in town to pick up my Senior America the Beautiful lifetime pass and we got a free Military dependent pass for Katie. We joined the locals in Colville for breakfast at Zip’s.

It was fun sitting and listening to the good ole boys talking about their doings and their take on what happened to that Malaysian plane.

Our 6 hour drive home back to the city was uneventful and that’s the way we like it.

So…are you a country mouse or a city mouse or maybe a little of both?

Travelling Surprises…

On Friday we left the Seattle Area at 11:00 A.M. and headed east on Interstate 90 for Eastern Washington to visit our son Dan for the weekend. The road across Snoqualmie Pass was clear of snow and uneventful. As we approached the Columbia River we took notice of the lower water levels because of a crack and repairs on one of the dams upriver.

When we approached the the Quincy area we saw that the wind was really causing some dust storms and as we got closer to the area we saw this eerie sight.

The Attack of the Tumbleweeds!

The tumbleweeds crossing the interstate went on for miles. We hit so many and we noticed many trapped underneath cars and in the front grills.

It was a lot spookier than it looks in my photos. When we pulled off the interstate in Spokane we stopped so an older man could cross the road. He stopped in front of our car and pulled out the large tumble weed that was lodged in our grill. We laughed and thanked him!

We made it to Dan’s in record time and unpacked the car and then headed for dinner.

The roads from Dan’s place to the grocery store on Saturday were quiet and beautiful. I saw a rafter of wild turkeys.

It’s great to travel roads in the great open spaces.

On the way home today the only excitement we had was a snow/rain mix on the pass.

I’ll post more photos of our time at Dan’s place in the next few days now that we are back home again. Hope all is good in your corner of the world.

Across the Miles…

…we want to wish our son Daniel the happiest of birthdays!

Today is Daniel’s birthday. He gets to celebrate twice this week since his girlfriend’s birthday was on the 15th. Happy Birthday dear Dan! Happy belated birthday Jamie!

If you head over to MGCC you’ll see the apple tart I made from the apples off Dan’s property that he prepped so nicely and froze for me. We so enjoy Dan’s kindness and generous heart. He’s not a man of many words but when the time is right he speaks up. His one liners really make us laugh.

This was taken on Dan’s birthday in 1989. He’s the one in the green, yellow and blue t-shirt with the big smile. He loved choo choo train cakes. My photo skills were questionable with good old fashioned film.

This last photo was from our journey moving from California to Washington back in July of 1988. We stopped at Aunt Carol’s house in Yuba City and our kids got to ride one of their horses. I think it’s great that Dan gets to ride horses regularly all these years later in his new environment in Eastern Washington.

Left to right: Aunt Carol, Dan, Josh, and Katie

Gone are the days that being all together on each of our birthdays is a reality or expected. Separated by distance we take full advantage of the times we are all together and try to celebrate to the full.

We’ve been happy to have some dry days here in the Seattle area. The sun has even managed to shine through here and there. How are things in your neck of the woods?

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Tag Archives: Eastern Washington